BEYOND THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESSA science-fiction horror game

Beyond the Mountains of Madness is a science-fiction horror game (modification) for Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

My work

Started in March 2011, Beyond the Mountains of Madness was my first serious venture in videogame development in a 3D environment.

Developing this modification helped me learn a lot about the nature of video game development, such as scripting, real-time computer graphics, level design, world building &optimisation. Having access to pre-made art assets, I primarily focused on the technical and design aspects of game development.

Through this project, I learnt AngelScript, which uses C/C++syntaxes, without the need to worry about memory allocation. I also learnt to use Frictional Games' in-house engine 'HPL Engine', which is similar to the Source engine in terms of interface and high-level features.

With Beyond The Mountains of Madness, I wanted to create levels that seamlessly transitioned from indoor spaces to outside environments. The HPL engine wasn't really designed for this however, which meant that I had to do quite a bit of optimisation in order to make the game run at a consistent frame rate. This was mainly done through traditional techniques such as distance culling masked by fog (Silent Hill 2 is probably the best example of this).

Although a great learning opportunity in many regards, the project I envisioned was quite large in terms of scope and scale. In retrospect, I should have probably created some smaller modifications first, before attempting to create something of this magnitude.